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Dear flist,
There are a number of you who need to read this article in Slate right now, this minute. Here's an excerpt:
Television hates nothing more than a happy couple....we've all grown used to the couples we love waiting a lot longer than two years to get it on. The problem seems to be that writers and actors are unable to reliably generate ( Read more... )
There are a number of you who need to read this article in Slate right now, this minute. Here's an excerpt:
Television hates nothing more than a happy couple....we've all grown used to the couples we love waiting a lot longer than two years to get it on. The problem seems to be that writers and actors are unable to reliably generate ( Read more... )
I loved them to pieces. The dynamic was just wonderful.
I really want a Nick and Nora Charles style detective drama/comedy/mystery tv series
Yes! You have to give the characters a story to work with. Too many shows start with a premise that will instantly collapse if the couple ever gets together. (For instance, if the name of your show is The Nanny than if the nanny marries into the family and becomes the stepmother than your title doesn't even make sense anymore.) But if you start with a premise that says "These two people who are meant for each other are going to team up to fight crime or whatever," then you've got a chance. Which is why Moonlighting was such a crash-n-burn disappointment, because it had the potential to be a modern Nick & Nora (with added snark!) and instead they jettisoned the very part of the show that would have made the show work.
I have only the fuzziest memories of Hart to Hart (and some folks have since told me that it was total crap 1970's TV) but I do remember that it was quite popular in its day. Why has TV given up on the married-sleuths formula?
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Probably because all the married-sleuths tv series crashed-and-burned ;)
There's no real reason why that format shouldn't work on tv. We see it all the time with sitcoms. But not in dramas or genre. Do TPTB honestly think people *don't* want to see couples together? That this will keep us from watching? Or is it as the article on Slate suggests--that it's more fun to write misery than it is to come up with fresh ideas when people are married and settled down.
Why was the 80's flush with boy-girl detective shows, and now...zip?
(See in one of my comments above--there was Hart to Hart and there was also a show called McGruder and Loud which did the married cops dynamic beautifully).
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Silk Stalkings did great work with a fantastic relationship that was never any more than slightly flirty (until the veryvery end) because the RELATIONSHIP was cool.
And...Nick and Nora.
I love you guys for listing off all the great pieces of this history...and I agree with everyone who has said that the relationship can't be a crucial part of the dramatic tension if we're supposed to enjoy them together.
I think that Wash and Zoe could have been maintained literally indefinitely had it not been Joss, who doesn't allow Happily Ever After and who also seemed compelled to kill off his Harry Stu in order not to seem like he was being TOO fan-boy-ing about his own stuff.
I want the ongoing relationships that are a given...sure there is the occasional bump, but the real drama is from the plot, from the characters' emotional trials through which they're supported by their partner.
I keep wanting to believe it'll be like that somewhere, someday....somehow...(clearly I need to go to bed...)
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